This month the Writing NSW team has been devouring poetry, fiction and non-fiction, read on for what we’ve been enjoying!
‘What if systems were created to ensure that disabled people were put first, and not last? What kind of world would exist if disability was taken for granted, rather than tacked on? Let’s write some stories to find out.’
‘I have so many lovely moments when readers have recognised themselves in my personal essays and felt like I was writing about their own lives. It is in these moments that I see the true power of memoir; we are writing our own personal truths and yet these are universal truths.’
I believe our mental instability and persistent dissatisfaction in life can be attributed in part to being writers – the anxiety about a permanence that can never be perfect. We live with our past selves in print— yet we are allowed to grow. At any chance we are given. How do we write a self that will continue to expand and twirl across the eons of our limited time?
“The better you understand the intricacies of good writing, the more powerfully you can write about any aspect of your life.”
We interviewed renowned writer and critic Anwen Crawford ahead of her one-day course at Writing NSW, Adventures Among Essays.
‘Language has always been the tool I choose to work with … I think that there is no end to what we can do with language and no end to what we can learn about it, and from it.’
‘A critic should set out without too many preconceived notions about what they might find before they’ve begun.’
Amanda Hampson is the author of two non-fiction books and three novels. Her most recent novel, The French Perfumer, is out this month.
